Felicity Kendal and Maureen Lipman to Star in LETTICE AND LOVAGE at Menier Chocolate Factory

With She Loves Me currently running at its home base, Travesties and David Baddiel: My Family Not the Sitcom landing in the West End, and Funny Girl starting a major national tour, the Menier Chocolate Factory announces today that Trevor Nunn will direct Felicity Kendal and Maureen Lipman in Peter Shaffer's Lettice and Lovage. The production opens on 17 May, with previews from 4 May, and completing its run on 8 July; and follows Nunn's production of Rattigan's Love in Idleness. Priority booking opens on 22 February, with public booking from 1 March.

Lettice, employed as a stately home tourist guide, has inherited theatricality and eccentricity from her mother. Caught using 'alternative facts' to embroider the history of the house by Lotte, her supervisor, she is dismissed. During the dismissal interview they uncover common ground with the result that she and Lotte develop an unlikely friendship. This is the first major revival of Lettice and Lovage since the 1987 West End production.

Peter Shaffer's (1926 - 2016) plays include Five Finger Exercise (Evening Standard Drama Award), The Private Ear/The Public Eye, The Royal Hunt of the Sun, Black Comedy, Equus (Tony Award for Best Play)and Amadeus (Evening Standard Drama Award and Tony Award for Best Play).

Felicity Kendal plays Lettice Douffet. For theatre, her many credits include for Theatre Royal Bath: A Room With a View (and UK tour), Hay Fever (also Duke of York's Theatre), Relatively Speaking (also Wyndham's Theatre); The Last Cigarette (Chichester Festival and Trafalgar Studios), Mrs Warren's Profession (Comedy Theatre), The Vortex, Fallen Angels (Apollo Theatre), An Absolute Turkey (Globe Theatre), Waste, The Seagull (The Old Vic), Amy's View (Garrick Theatre), Indian Ink, Hapgood, Made in Bangkok (Aldwych Theatre), Hidden Laughter (Vaudeville), Tartuffe (Playhouse), The Real Thing (Strand), Heartbreak House (Theatre Royal Haymarket), and for the National Theatre, Arcadia, The Second Mrs Tanqueray, On the Razzle, Othello and Peter Shaffer's Amadeus in which she created the role of Constanze. For television, her work includes Inside No 9, Rosemary and Thyme (as series regular Rosemary Boxer), The Camomile Lawn and The Good Life (as series regular Barbara Good).

Maureen Lipman returns to the Menier Chocolate Factory to play Lotte Schoen - she previously appeared in A Little Night Music (also Garrick Theatre). Her many theatre credits include My Mother Said I Never Should (St James Theatre), Harvey (Theatre Royal Haymarket), Daytona (Park Theatre and Theatre Royal Haymarket), When We Are Married (Garrick Theatre), Glorious (Duchess), Aladdin and The Sisters Rosensweig (Old Vic), Thoroughly Modern Millie (Shaftesbury Theatre), Peggy For You (Hampstead), Re-Joyce (West End, national tour and US transfer), Wonderful Town (Queen's), See How They Run (Shaftesbury; Olivier Award for Best Comedy Performance) and extensive work for the National Theatre, including Oklahoma! (also West End), Macbeth, Long Day's Journey Into Night and The Front Page. For television, her work includes Plebs, Bull, Ladies of Letters, Skins, He Kills Coppers, Sensitive Skin, About Face, All at No. 20, Agony, Cold Enough for Snow and Eskimo Day; and for film, The Agent, The Pianist, Educating Rita and Gumshoe.

From 1968 to 1986, Trevor Nunn was the youngest ever Artistic Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, directing over thirty productions, including most of the Shakespeare canon, as well as Nicholas Nickleby and LES MISERABLES. From 1997 to 2003, he was Artistic Director of the National Theatre, where his productions included Troilus and Cressida, Oklahoma!, The Merchant of Venice, Summerfolk, My Fair Lady, A Streetcar Named Desire, Anything Goes and Love's Labour's Lost. He has directed the world premières of Tom Stoppard's plays Arcadia, The Coast of Utopia and Rock n Roll; and of Cats, Sunset Boulevard, Starlight Express and Aspects of Love by Andrew Lloyd Webber. Other theatre includes Timon of Athens, Skellig (Young Vic); The Lady From The Sea (Almeida Theatre); Hamlet, Richard II, Inherit the Wind (The Old Vic), A Little Night Music (Menier Chocolate Factory, West End and Broadway), Cyrano de Bergerac, Kiss Me Kate (Chichester Festival Theatre); Heartbreak House, Flare Path, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, The Tempest (Theatre Royal, Haymarket); Scenes from a Marriage (Coventry & St James), All That Fall (Jermyn Street & New York); A Chorus of Disapproval and Relative Values (West End). Work for television includes Antony and Cleopatra, The Comedy of Errors, Macbeth, Three Sisters, Othello, The Merchant of Venice and King Lear, and on film, Hedda, Lady Jane and Twelfth Night.

Box Office: 020 7378 1713 (£2.50 transaction fee per booking)

www.menierchocolatefactory.com

To post a comment, you must register and login.